The little travel scarf that wasn't

A few weeks ago I was set to go to the USA for the first time!  I had everything packed but for one thing- something to take in case I felt the urge to craft.  Particularly because it had to fly, it had to be small and lightweight so anything with lots of tools was right out.

I ended up deciding to find a knitting project and I went to the Bendigo Craft Alive with that in mind.  I bought several balls of lovely wool (Erm, I think several equals 6-7... oops) and thought that a nice lacy scarf of a lovely fluffy wool could be good.  I grabbed a nice rainbow yarn 'Damasco' by Bella Storia and cast on a few days before I was due to go to get it going. It was very simple- K1, yo, K2 tog.  Start with an odd number of stitches and you can make it as wide or as long as you like.  Perfect for fluffy yarns as the fluff fills in the holes a bit and it feels squooshy once made up.

Erm, well I finished it before I was due to fly out.  Ooops.  I only just got the fringe on though so here is my little travel scarf that didn't.

The irony is that I didn't need the replacement project either- I didn't end up touching it the entire trip!  Still, if I didn't have it then I would've really wanted to do something but not be able to!

Happy official birthday, Liz- cheers for the day off!

Hello Blog readers!

It is the Queen's Birthday holiday and that means I have been able to get a bit done this weekend.  Hooray!

I've lots of projects in progress at the moment but I've finished a few things recently.  My first is a mohair knitted scarf.  It was made using a fine 2ply-ish wool, knit double with two different colours, one cream, one a more brown colour.  Looks lovely after blocking and you can hardly tell where I had to go and fix where a thread was accidentally cut (argh!).

The scarf- pay no attention to the pile of marking on the table...

I've also succumed to the dark side- I've started to buy supplies to get into card making...
Here is my first attempt, using an old shadow embroidery piece that I made years ago.

The only down side is that I was a bit of an idiot and tried cutting some of the circles out AFTER mounting the embroidery.  It wouldn't have mattered except the whole pesky fact I had some glass beads on the piece.  Had being the operative word for several.

After this card I was on a roll.  I went to go on and play with some of the embossing folders and dies that I had acquired.  Then there was a little problem.  The die cutting machine that I had (a hand me down from my very much card-making mother) decided that it was done in a rather rash way- the gears inside shattered (plastic gears it turned out) and was so locked up that it took the embossing folder I had tried to run through it at the same time.  Sigh.

Since I had already now purchased many dies and embossing folders it has meant that I bought a new toy- a new die cut machine- to replace it.  The upshot is, expect to see some more cards in the future.  Well unless they are intended for my Mum who reads this blog, anyway!

I (still) aint dead

Phew, usual long time no post deal.  Work continues to be busy, oh and since I last posted I also moved house!

Anyway, this is just a short update of a few bits and bobs that I finished relatively recently.

Number one, my new craft desk.  Still a work in progress as far as setting things up, but it's nice to have a large flat surface to work on.  I have also started to succumb at least a little to the dark side (aka making cards).  However, since one of the main recipients also reads this blog, I'm not sure how that will work as far as making things a surprise (hi Mum!)


I also finished a scarf/wrap thing that I made using a souvenir ball of wool that I bought when I was in Sydney (wool is a great souvenir as you get to remember the holiday both from the original and then when you use it to make something!).


Finally here is something I found on the camera and seem to have forgotten to post- a pretty blue sparkly bracelet.


Anyway, this blog isn't forgotten, just lacking new material for now.  The spirit is willing but the time to develop them is lacking.  School is back on Monday so that will not change in the near future unless I win the lottery but I do have a new Discworld stamp yearbook that I'll post here for the 2015 calendar year once I finish proof reading it.

Knitting again

As you may have noticed from the lack of a post last week, I've run out of pre-written posts so I'll be back on a infrequent posting schedule for a while.

This week's post is just showing a few knitting things I've made recently.

Just before Christmas, the Christmas Edititon of Let's Get Crafting Knitting & Crochet #54 caught my eye, particularly the little gnome on the front of the magazine.  In fact it was enough for me to buy the magazine, even though the other patterns didn't really appeal.  So despite the fact that my personal rule is that a book or magazine should have at least 2-3 patterns I can at least pretend I will try making in my lifetime, I bought it anyway and made Noel the Gnome (Noel- Christmas- oh they must've racked their brains on that name!)

The other thing I've just finished is a scarf that was in my Ravelry queue for a long time- the Hitchhiker scarf that, as of the time of writing, 13,546 projects on Ravelry have been made!  It's a little popular!

I really liked the pattern- it's simple enough to do without needing to read the pattern once you get a few points done and the shape is really different for a scarf.  The only downside I had initially was putting it down and picking it up if I hadn't kept track of my rows carefully enough.  I kept forgetting which side had the increases (there is an increase on the end of every row on the non-pointed side of knitting but the pointed sides don't have increases except on the point).

I also didn't have quite enough wool to make 42 points (which is of course important as it is the answer to life, the universe and everything).  The wool was some handspun I got from the Bendigo wool show a few years ago so getting more wasn't really an option.   It has got 40 points, so it isn't as if it is significantly shorter however, and I hope that my little sister likes it as part of her birthday present this year!  She's been starting to get into doing markets so as the weather finally starts to think about turning cooler, it might be useful on cold mornings.

The only other thing at the moment is still on the needles and has been for a while.  It's a cardigan but it's at the 'sleeves of doom' stage which combines boring stockingette with knitting in the round on double pointed needles.  I don't mind the stockingette so much (which is good as the whole thing was stockingette!) but I am not a fan of double pointed needles as I can't build up a good mindless rhythm while I do something else.  I'm about half way through the first sleeve and at the moment I'm not allowing myself to cast anything else on until I get this thing done.  I figure that either I'll procrastinate knitting with the marking I have to do, or procrastinate my marking with knitting sleeves of doom!

Knitted Bag Part 2

Many moons ago I posted a pattern to make a simple knitted satchel bag. I always intended to show how I finished it off and I'm sorry it's been so long!

These methods could in theory be used for any sort of bag, particularly one of a soft material that will stretch when the bag is filled.  Unfortunately though, the photos I took for the first steps have disappeared.  I blame goblins in the camera deleting them from the SD card.  It is, after all, the only logical explanation...  So apologies, but you will have to cope with me explaining what to do.  I would suggest though you read through the whole thing and sketch out a design to work out quantities of materials.

Materials for bag liner

• Felt- amount will depend on what you bag size is.
• Plastic canvas (the hole size doesn't matter- I used it because it is a lightweight, flexible material that can be cut easily)
• Ribbon (a little narrower than the thickness of your bag)
• D rings
• Sewing thread and either a sewing machine or needles to hand sew

Method

Note, the sizes I give throughout are only for an example bag so you can see what I mean with dimensions.  You will want to measure your own bag and work out sizes based on what you want!

The first step is to cut two pieces of plastic canvas to about 1cm smaller than the interior of your bag.  For example, if your bag is 27 x 15cm , you want your canvas to be 26 x 14 cm.  Then cut four pieces of felt to the exact size of your bag interior (27 x 15cm in the example I'm using).

Centre the plastic canvas on one piece of felt and lay a second piece on top.  Sew around all four sides to secure the canvas inside.  This will give your bag its structure.  Do the same for the other side.

Now for the design part.  The exact style of the bag liner is entirely up to you.  At the most basic level, what you are aiming for is to make a simple box, open on one end.  But you can customise it however you like.  In the picture below, you can see that I've added some pockets (sew these onto the felt before you sew the piece to the plastic canvas if you want to machine sew things together).  I've also added a large piece of felt to act as a large pocket.  Just remember that if you are making a pocket for something thick (pen etc) that you take that into account.  For the pen holders for instance, I sewed one side, then moved the felt so there was extra material on the pocket side to have room for the pen.  It's hard to explain, but basically just don't have both pieces of felt flat against each other or your pocket will only be able to hold thin objects.

When you have a idea of what you want, you'll need two small rectangles to act as the sides of the bag (the same height as the bag and however wide you want the bag to be.  15 x 5cm in my example.  Another piece of felt will be the base and be the length of the bag by the width.  27 cm x 5cm.

Sew all the sides together to make the liner (see the picture above).

Now to put it into the bag itself.  There are two options.  You could just place it inside the bag and secure it with a few stitches if you felt like it.  But I felt that this would place all the weight against the bottom of the bag when filled, and the stitching would stretch out. Instead, I've done something a little different.

Take the ribbon and wrap in around the outside of your liner.  What this is going to do is support the weight of the contents.  You can secure the ribbon with a few stitches at each seam if you wish but I didn't bother.

Now place the liner into the knitted bag and bring the ribbon up to each side.  Thread the ribbon through the D ring and stitch securely.  All the weight of the bag is now going to be carried by the ribbon into the D ring (and strap/handle) directly.  This means, no stretchy bag!  I also stitched (seperately) the sides of the knitted bag to the ribbon to hold things together.

Now all you have to do is the finishing touches.  I made a handle from left over yarn using a lucet, but the options are endless.  I also stitched the knitted bag to the liner all around to prevent the knitted edges from curling away and looking messy.

The finished bag

Hope you find this useful. Do let me know if you try this.  Comments make me happy :D

A bit of a dye-lema

OK, apparently dyeing causes an irresistible urge to pun when making blog posts!  Fortunately for you I've finished for the present and here is the result of those experiments.  My previous post showed my colour experiments with some mini melusine samples.

Well I decided to go with a blue green system but to tweak the colours a little to brighten them up.  I gathered my supplies and set up my base of operations, supervised by my neighbour's cat (you can just see her legs at the top of shot.

All I had to do was paint in each block.  Nice and simple.

Four and a half hours later, one major disaster when one of the dyes tipped over onto the shawl and having to remix both the light green and blue stocks and I was very happy to take this photo because it meant I was done!

It's now wrapped up and bagged in some black plastic bags to let it heat set in the car.  Typically to my luck so far, the weather has become a little cooler (now I want a 40+ C day, there's none to be seen on the forecast!).  Still, it could've been much worse and I'm cautiously pleased with the results. I won't be 100% sure of results until I give it a wash and see that the dye has properly set!

I'm dyeing, I'm dyeing...

A while ago a friend put me onto The AntiCraft! website which has a whole range of craft projects that vary in type and complexity.  And I found Melusine, a lovely hand dyed shawl that not only was my first 'hey, you can dye knitting after knitting' but also went on to explain 'and here is how'.  Since one important part is being able to heat set the dye but they pointed out that placing the material in a black plastic bag and placing it into a hot car, and since I live in Australia (which is known for hot!) it seemed providential!

So a knitting I went.  I had some 2 ply wool/silk yarn in my stash that was waiting for inspiration so it seemed povidential.  But since I have never dyed anything before and since it took a long time to make the shawl, I thought it prudent to make a few mini versions to experiment with.  And here's my dye results.

The first I tried was a blue green version.  The colours set incredibly well but were a little darker than I think I like so if I go with this for the big one, I'll cut back on the black dye.  Particularly for the greens


I also didn't have any paint brushes handy so I used cotton buds.  These allowed for great control of the dying, but it took much longer than I thought it would.  When sitting on concrete outside hunched over a small scarf, this is Not A Good Thing.

The long time and the weather meant I had a break before doing the next one- I was NOT going to sit outside on a 40+º C day.  Today was cooler (bliss!) so I set up for number 2.

This one was inspired by one I saw on Ravelry.  However, I had a number of technical issues that made this a challenge.  First was that for some strange reason the yellow and red dyes did not dissolve nicely the way that the two green and two blue stocks I had despite them all coming from the same company (Jaccard Acid Dyes) and using the same method (chemistry is strange!).  The yellow didn't dissolve well which was annoying but not the end of the world.  The red though, was just strange.

Initially it was fine- placed the powder into warm water.  Dissolved the lot, no problems.  Then the stock cooled.  Except it didn't just cool, it partially set.  Think jelly made up with a bit too much water.  The resulting mix was very viscous, sludgy and a bit lumpy.  Couple this with the bright red colour and the result does have a disturbing resemblance to prop blood from CSI or something similar

It also was a pain to measure out into the working mixture since it was so incredibly viscous.  I ended up with the scientific measure of 'a gloop' and stirring like crazy to try and get it mixed into the mix with limited success.

And to top it all off there is a big splodge where the fabric slipped when wrapping it in gladwrap for heat setting the dye- so a big dark bit was in contact with a yellow bit.  You can see the resulting splodge on the left hand side in the photo above.  *sigh*

Still, it could all be worse- this all could've happened on my big shawl!  Weather is warming up again next week so I'll see if I can get this done before it's too hot and/or I have to go back to work.

Into the Labyrinth Bag Part 2

Hooray for school holidays!  It means I can finally get some of the jobs that have been sitting on the back-burner done!

Labyrinth bag blocking

Today's post is about how I finished off my 'Into the Labyrinth' bag.  In the previous post I had the bag finished but needing a liner so the wool that was carried on the back of the knitting would not tangle with every item put into the bag.

Step one was to block it so it would hold it's shape.  This was easy to do- lightly wet your bag (the wetter it is, the longer to dry so you ideally want it just damp- or do this on a stinking hot day).  Then put it into the final shape.  I achieved this by rolling up a towel until it was the desired internal diameter and placed it inside.  If sitting it upright like I did to allow it to dry evenly, then safety pins can be useful to hold the top up.

Then to work on the liner. I wanted cheap and easy so I went with pieces of felt. They are available most commonly in A4 sizes so I went with that.  However, if you don't want to sew multiple seams to get the diameter right then fabric shops will have wider widths you can buy by the metre.  For my bag I went with two black pieces for the side and a piece of light green for the base, partly because contrast is pretty and it matches the front but mostly because I hate having to hunt for a dark object in a dark bag with dark lining.  The green piece was cut to be about 1cm smaller than the size of the leather base on the bag itself.

Next sew the sides together and check they fit around your base.  Tiny confession here- technically my sides were about 3cm too short to fit around my base. But felt is forgiving and by the time it was put into a bag I figured it wouldn't matter.  Fit the base around the sides and use safety pins to hold in place and to ensure your sewing will be even.  Then just stitch the base on.  You can see mine below with the cool matching green thread.

Once done, place into your bag and check for fit.  My sides were about 2cm too long.  You could cut the excess off or you can fold over and hold in place.  I chose the latter.

You can also see the cunning method I used to hold the liner to the bag- eyelets.  Adding them is fairly simple.  You usually get a tool to hold the two parts together and you need a big hammer.  Going through multiple layers of felt can result in a poor fit of your eyelet (ask me how I know!)  so I suggest punching a hole through the felt if you have a hole punch.  I didn't have one so I will probably have to go back and redo a couple at some point *sigh*

When finished thread a cord through the eyelets.  I used satiny cord- little tip.  If using something like that the ends will LOVE to fray or unravel.  CAREFULLY IN A WELL VENTILATED AREA use a lighter to set the ends on fire.  The synthetic material will melt and hold the end together.  Be sure to let it cool before touching it (or letting it touch anything else).

That's pretty much it.  One Labyrinth bag, suitable for holding knitting project, lovely jewels, crystal balls, or supplies for 13 hours travelling through a Labyrinth.

Blue Bird of Happiness

Blue Bird of Happiness, a photo by Kelshandra on Flickr.
I'm heading to the Australian Discworld convention in two weeks!  Woot!  And because it is always more fun to have a costume for that sort of thing, after much careful consideration, to dress as the Cheerful Fairy.  Don't remember her?  She's in the Hogfather and is one of several mythical creatures who arise after the Hogfather is um, killed?  Made to not exist?


"'Excuse me madam' said Ridcully. 'But is that a chicken on your shoulder?' 'It's, er, it's, er, it's the Blue Bird of Happiness' said the Cheerful Fairy."

So I needed a blue chicken.  But I figured it would be much more amusing if my chicken was looking a bit sad and pathetic... 'my Blue Bird of Happiness hasn't been himself lately'.  A toy rubber chicken and a can of spraypaint later and things were looking a bit sad.  Paint oozing off the rubber chicken and not drying.  So I came up with a plan B; one rubber chicken pattern later, some cheap acrylic and there you go.  Not sure if I'll use him but I do sense a charity raffle contribution at the end.




Now to go and work out the rest of my costume! Any Discworld jokes for the Cheerful Fairy's joke book?  Leave a comment below.

An elephant for my nephew

It's been a while and my only excuse is that I've not been crafting (which is sad, I know).  But my nephew's first birthday was approaching so I decided to pull out the knitting needles because I found a lovely pattern for a knitted elephant. The pattern is one from the book Knitted Wild Animals by Sarah Keen.  I nearly bought the book in Lincraft but at $30 for the book, knowing that I'd make one or two animals at most, it was a bit dear.  However, happily when I got home I searched Ravelry for an elephant I found that the designer had a pattern available online- free!  Here's the link to the Woman's Day site it is available through.

The pattern is well written for the most part, there was only one part that was a little confusing (and based on Ravelry I wasn't the only one).  While the body pieces use make 1 stitches (so don't increase within a stitch but rely on making a new stitch), the other pieces use increases (knitting in the front and back).  If you don't realise this and instead continue to make stitches when making the head etc, your stitch counts will be off.

But aside from that little hiccup, it's a lovely pattern.  Easy and quick to make and looks adorable. If you wanted to make a menagerie of animals then I would say the book Knitted Wild Animals is a good buy.  If you only want to make an elephant then this is a good one to make- particularly if you are relatively new to toy making.

And the careful observers would already have realised that I've not put a tail on my elephant yet- oops!  I'll just go do that now!

Knitted bag pattern Part 1

I needed a new knitting project, I need a new handbag (the strap attachment fell off and it keeps trying to eat any knitted tops I'm wearing) and I also need to use up some of the wool in my stash (otherwise I'll not be able to buy more!)  I had five balls of Lincraft's Prism yarn in blue and beige.  It has a very slow colour change that I like- I much prefer large lengths in a colour that gently changes than wool that is constantly changing as I prefer the way it knits up.

I had a free pattern from Lincraft for a bag using the yarn but decided to tweak it a bit lot, so here's my altered version.  Warning in advance- this has ended up being quite long so I will split it into two posts- inside and outside!  I also talk a lot about different customisation options so you might want to read through the entire post before you cast on.

Front
Cast on 48 stitches.  Knit in stocking stitch for 17 rows, then knit two rows of reverse stocking.  Repeat these 19 rows, then knit 17 stitches of stocking stitch and cast off.

Back and flap
Cast on 48 stitches.  Knit in stocking stitch for 17 rows, then knit two rows of reverse stocking.  Repeat these 19 rows twice more.   At this point you should have 3 reverse stocking stitch lines ending with the two reverse stocking rows and this back should be the same size as the front piece.

To make the top and flap continue knitting as follows:
Row 1: K2, purl to last 2, K2
Row 2: K all
These two rows repeated will make the front flap in stocking stitch with a garter stitch band on either side to stop curling.  Continue for the size you wish for your flap (include an extra 8cm or so to the length to allow for the distance the flap covers to go from the top over to the front- the top bit in other words). When you nearly reach the size of the flap that you wish ending with a knit row (mine was 21 cm from the last reverse stocking rows), shape as follows for the final rows:

Row 1:  K2, P2 tog, P to last 4, P2togtbl, K2
Row 2: Knit all
Row 3: K2, ssk, ssk, K to last 4, K2 tog, K2
Row 4: Repeat Row 3

Cast off

The garter stitch edging should help the material curl up at all, but you will still probably find you need to block the material to make it lie flat.  In addition, you can line your bag including the flap to help it hold its shape- more on that in a future post.

Sides (make 2)
Cast on 12 stitches.  Knit in stocking stitch until the length of the side is the length of the front MINUS half the width of the side.  So if your front piece was 25 cm and your side was 8 cm wide like my test bag, you want to make your side 21 cm long.
NOTE- if you want to have a bag handle as part of the side, read the notes below first!

Checking the size of the bag side- this is about the right length.  The knitting needle on the right shows the seam point for the bottom of the bag.

Strap
Option 1- Garter stitch
There are several options for bag straps.  Many knitted bags I've seen use garter stitch straps.  On the plus side, these will match your bag exactly since they are, of course, made from the same material.  On the minus side, they tend to stretch, particularly if you load up your bag the way that I do mine.  If you go this option, make your strap shorter than you want it to be to take this stretch into account.

If you have more self control in bag packing than me, then you may wish to make the sides and the strap all in one piece.  If so, just switch to garter stitch when one side is the required length, then stitch for the length of your strap (don't forget the stretch factor) before switching back to stocking for the other side.

Option 2- Icord or other cord options
Icord is another option (tons of tutorials out there online so I'll let you find one yourself).  It can either be knitted on double pointed needles or using a Knitting Nancy (anyone else have one as a kid?  I had two, one of which was my mothers from when she was a kid!).  A similar sort of cord can be made using a lucet which is a bit like a primitive ancestor of a Knitting Nancy.  Yonks ago I wrote a review of a lucet... I must dig it out and post it here

Option 3- Something else
The final option is to use some other material entirely for the bag strap.  Since there is quite a lot in the world that is is 'something else' I shall leave it to you to investigate this option

Assembly
Smart people block pieces before sewing them up.  Thanks to a combination of impatience and absent-mindedness I didn't do this, so please forgive the curly nature of the pieces in the photos below.

Sew the bottom of the front and back piece together (while you could choose to knit this as one piece, using a seam should make the bottom stronger and avoid sagging when loaded up with stuff). 

Bottom and top sewn together  and the first side in progress (the knitting needle shows the location of the bottom seam)

Sew the side panels to the front and back.  I found it best to start an the bottom of the side piece (so at the seam of the front and back) and sew up to ensure things are even.  When sewn on, the side piece should the just the right height to reach the top of the front, and to the last reverse stocking section of the back.

Sew the bottom of the side pieces on first, centred over the bottom seam

 When finished your bag should look a bit like this, or uncurly if you were good and actually blocked the pieces first!

If you didn't block it, now would be a good time.  Dampen the wool (or soak it- just bear in mind it will take much longer to dry) and pin it to shape on a suitable flat surface.  I like to use a beach towel over a cheap yoga mat because I can lay it out anywhere I like.  Once dry, the material should not curl up like it's trying to hide!

Next step is to attach the strap to the bag.  I am using some large rings I bought from the craft shop.  These will be sewn to the top of each side piece and the strap will then be attached to the rings. If you want a simple bag, you can do this step now, add your strap and call it good.

However, I am going to do something sneaky.  I am making a fitted organiser to go with this bag.  It will have pockets to hold things that otherwise disappear such as my mobile phone, and will also sneakily attach to the rings to prevent the bag from sagging out of shape too much.  Because of this, I am going to leave the rings for another post.  Trust me, it will make more sense in the end.

Click here to go straight to part 2

Happy New Year!

Happy new year everyone!  Hope 2012 is a good one for you all.  Things have slowed down here on the crafting front in anticipation of my big move (8 days to go).  Because I've been starting to pack, that means about half my craft stuff is packed away.  I only have a few projects out (tricky since trying to decide what projects can be packed up and what should stay out until the last minute changes based on mood).

One thing I have managed to do is finish Queen Anne's Curse.  I had thought the curse would be over once I cast off, and I'd managed to catch a few stitches on the last few rounds that inexplicably jumped off the needles to sit, lurking, waiting for the moment to run away, giggling evilly.  I finished the last stitch on Christmas day and could finally spread out my work to happily gloat over.

Queen Anne's Curse, still with the life lines in

But then I pulled out the two lifelines that kept it in a sort of blobby mass.  Spreading it out for the first time I looked in horror....

The ruddy thing is way too small!  I was expecting it to be much bigger for some reason.  It is about 84 cm in diameter laid out on my bed.  And given it is made of cotton, I'm not sure if it will stretch at all by washing and blocking it (if anything, the cotton might shrink- eek!)

And if that wasn't enough, clearly one of the balls of cotton I used, despite being the same brand, dye (well, white) and type, clearly had a different colour/ thickness? than the rest.  That ring around the half way point is not a design feature- well it wasn't originally, it is now!

It is now packed it a bag to await my big move before I even think about trying to block it   Still, that was 2011.  Onward to 2012, where nothing can possibly go wrong.  Right?  Right?!

Dressing up Barbie

Christmas is coming (I'll pause to allow those who have not realised it yet to gasp in shock) and that means finding presents for my family.  Today's post covers the present for my three year old niece who can't read or search the internet yet, thus making it safe for me to post about.

Given that my knitting addiction shows no signs of abating I thought I'd make some more clothes for Barbie.  Partly to feed my crafting addiction and partly because it seems hard to even find clothes in the shops- it is a tad excessive to need to buy a whole new doll every time you want to get a new costume!

So I searched Ravelry and found a magnificent site for knitting Barbie patterns: Sticka till Barbie.  There are hundreds of different patterns there!  Using some left over sock yarn I had, I quickly whipped up a little coat and a little hat (#88 and #A40 respectively if you are looking for the pattern).
  

Then yesterday I was prowling in a little local craft shop that I had not visited before and found some lovely sparkly fingering yarn (Peter Pan Washable Goldfingering).  It was just cheap enough that I found myself justifying my purchase.  I ended up choosing pattern #984, Green Long Gown to make.

Due to the amount of yarn I had though (about 100m on the ball) I ended up having to modify the pattern a bit.  While the original was for a floor length gown, I had to make a shorter skirt.  To make the edge of the skirt more interesting I also used a picot bind off.  Attempt one though was going to need a bit more yarn than I had (I was about 20 stitches away from finishing when I ran out and needed to go back and pick up 180+ stitches- d'oh!).  I decreased the number of picots and all was well (I cast on 2, bound off 6 and repeated this pattern right the way through).

Here is one of my old Barbie dolls testing out the dress (two photos, one without flash, one with because the detail shows better without but the colour is truer with flash).   It is now wrapped up, ready for Christmas day and I can now get back to knitting my Queen Anne's curse (I've nearly finished Chart 3).

Queen Anne's Curse

Time for a new knitting project! I have not totally finished the Labyrinth bag yet but the weather has been too cold for blocking.  I like to block outside on hot Melbourne days because things dry nice and fast- the weather and my schedule have not meshed yet so I've a few things in the block queue.

I decided that now was the time to make Queen Anne's Lace (ravelry link), a lovely pattern designed by MMario.  I had stumbled on the crochet cotton I had bought years ago to make it so I even had the material needed on hand.  After some searching I found my double pointed needles (DPNs).  While I seem to have more than a dozen (all metal- this will be important later), it also appears that the only size I have is 3 mm so that decided the gauge!  Casting on was as fiddly as all get out.  That first join and then the first few rounds, all while juggling four very slippery needles caused a few false starts but once I got a few rows in things got a little easier.

Then disaster- one of the needles dropped (cotton on metal- no friction to speak of.  Gravity and indeed, random gusts of wind will be sufficient to pull needles out.  Recommended for use only in zero G by masochists) and 4-5 stitches fell off.  Bad words were said.  Saying a prayer to the knitting gods I tried to quickly pick up the stitches before they noticed they were free and unrestrained.  While a few seemed a little wonky, I thought I had gotten away with it.  A few rounds later I switched everything to a cable needle (ripping the packaging open to get it- apparently I had bought a 3 mm circular needle some time ago but didn't need it until now- this will be important later).  A few further rounds (to row 20 to be precise) I had enough room on the cable to pull back and see how the lace was developing...

Attempt #1.  Can you see where the pattern goes wrong?

Yeah, turns out that I hadn't picked up those stitches as well as I had thought.  And because of the needle, over half of the pattern was out of phase- you can see in the picture above that the pattern (moving anticlockwise from 12) starts out lovely, then goes to put at about 8 o'clock.  There was no way I was going to be able to fix that.  So I sighed sadly and frogged the lot.

Attempt #2
I hadn't made it to the shops (once I had things onto the circular needle there wasn't the same urgency to get some bamboo DPNs.  But I knew of their evil properties now.  I was not going to be beaten by four inanimate objects.  The initial fiddliness was perhaps slightly mitigated by experience this time and I soon was knitting comfortably.  As soon as I could, I transferred the work to the cable needle and could thus banish the evil metal DPNs to the storage tin, safe in the knowledge that my work was now safe on a needle with only two ends where stitches could be lost, not six.  Several rows pass.

I was getting into the flow and things were getting to that zen like state you get when knitting.  The hands do the work on muscle memory, with only the occasional input needed from the brain of either 1,2, yarn over, 1, 2, yarn over... or the slightly more processing rich 'you've reached the end of a row, pause to check what's next' stage.  Both of which generally allow for other entertainment to simultaneously occur (reading things online is my favourite).  I am using the magic loop method (or my weird version of it, I've never worked out if I do it 'properly' since I came up with it on my own- I never realised that people normally use two cable needles and that using only one was odd so I just figured out a method when I first started knitting in the round).

Row 13, which means it is a lace row.  I successfully do the first half of the circle.  I give my cable needle a gentle tug to pull things into place for the second half and- $%*&~!  Why is there just the unattached needle in my hand?  Where's the ruddy cable?  That must mean it’s come of the cable and …. oh no. Please don’t tell me that half my stitches have been pulled off... OK, I won't tell you but don't look at your hand...  And remember readers, that was a new (Sullivans- they are not on my good list so I'll name them! Besides the only reason why I know is because it was a new needle) cable needle.

Attempt #2.  Note the broken cable needle and that large stretch of unrestrained lace

So attempt #2 is dead (well I went to complain to Mum and when I said I was going to rip it apart she said she could probably use the remains on a card so I just cut the thread).

Attempt 3 is waiting until I get a new cable needle (NOT the same brand), probably some new bamboo DPN to start it with and a large bottle of something to make me happy.  I also went back and renamed this project in my Ravelry list.  Besides, Queen Anne's Curse sounds like a pirate ship's name which I like.

Into the Labyrinth Bag Part 1

This is a variation of a lovely bag The Anticraft's online 'zine.  It is called Creeping Jenny and I really loved the innovative design.  It uses a piece of vinyl with holes punched around the edge which the yarn is then picked up through and knitted.  The pattern also uses an interesting contrast of black and a bright green that I love.

The materials I used (due to the difficulty finding supplies sometimes, I had to make a few subsitutions).

• 1 piece of leather, 16 cm in diameter
• Smallest leather punch you can find (mine is about 2-2.5 mm in diameter)
• 1 skein each of '2nd Time Cotton', one charcoal (922) and one avocado (549)
• 4.5 mm circular knitting needle
• Stitch markers

I was going to make this as written (well, more or less).  I found a bit of leather (old scrap from my Mum's craft stash) that I cut to shape and punched holes in.  The Creeping Jenny pattern calls for 100 holes around the edge of the 16 cm diameter, or about one 2 mm hole every 5 mm.  But I was worried that this would actually end up weakening the base- think of the perforations on stamps to make them easy to tear apart!  So instead I only made half the number of holes.

Sticky tape is a great way to hold your template in place while you make the holes

I only punched every other hole because I didn't want to have a weak join

To cast on from your base you need a small crochet hook that will fit through the holes of the base.  From the right side, push your crochet hook through the hole and use this to pull a loop of wool to the right side.  Place this onto a circular knitting needle.Repeat until you have 50 stitches on your needle.

In the first round, knit in the front and back of loop to double the number of stitches.  Knit the next four rounds to make the base.

Originally I intended to make the Creeping Jenny pattern- sort of a yin-yang feel pattern.  But then I started to think.  I liked the pattern, but it wasn't quite right.  What I wanted was similar but more like.... a maze... like a labyrinth!  Ooooh....  I saw a lovely example a month or so ago on Craftster using tunisian crochet.  The colours of this are lovely (the only thing that prevented me from changing my colours was the fact I'd already bought my yarn!).  I could've used this pattern but since I'm knitting in the round, I thought it would be nice to have a maze that went all the way around.

To google I went!  Only to find that there were was no such thing out in internet land- d'oh!  There is only one thing to do- make one myself.  Step one was to make a maze.  Now here I did cheat a bit.  In my internet searching I found this terrific maze generator.  It lets you pick the size and dimensions of the maze that you wish to make, along with an option of 'average path length' or 'how far on average before reaching a turn'.  It then makes both a review black and white image of the maze (to get a feel for how it will look as a pattern) along with a graph version.  Because the size will include a border around the edge, I generated a 101 wide by 39 high maze with an average path length of 3.

Half way point when I realised the bag would
be too big with the chart as written!

The resulting graph was lovely and twisty but that border needed sorting out.  So the next step, copy the graph into my go-to cross stitch program.  I did this by hand because the jpg of the maze generated had a watermark that I thought might confuse the pattern import.  Once that was done, I tweaked the design to make a seamless graph by removing the border and making some paths over the border and fixing a few bits for technical issues.  While I don't mind a 10-15 stitch float because I know I am going to line the resulting bag, I thought a 35 stitch float might be a bit long!  I actually have two different graphs, one of 40 charted rows, the other of 30.  This is due to me reaching the halfway point in my knitting and realising that my bag was going to be VERY deep if I followed the original pattern so I went back to my pattern and fiddled it a bit to make a shorter version.  Click on the chart to embiggen.

Now if you want to make this yourself, I would recommend two things- lots of stitch markers (I'm using one every ten stitches) and printing out the graph so you can cross off as you go.  I'm using the multi-pass technique described here at TECHknitting. Basically, on the first pass of a row, you knit all the stitches of one colour (eg green) and slip (purlwise to prevent stitches twisting) all the colours of the contrast colour (black).  After one round you go back with the OTHER colour and knit all the black stitches and slip all the green- so after two goes around you have done ONE row of knitting.  For this pattern, TWO rows of knitting are needed per charted row so that will mean four times around per charted row.  Confused yet?  Wait, there's more!

You also need to remember for knitting charts to start at the BOTTOM RIGHT of the chart and read from right to left.  Now this is not absolutely vital for this chart.  Your hero blogger managed to forget this crucial point and only realised several rows in.  Not wanting to have to frog the knitting, she shrugged and called it a mirror design feature.  But if you are doing a chart with letters, for instance, this important tip will prevent your letters and words being backwards.

The other important thing to be aware of is the yarn that is carried behind the knitting on the slipped stitches called floats.  In this pattern they are often very long in places- this is not recommended practise for clothing!  If this were a jumper or gloves your hands would get tangled in them constantly, they'd break and things would turn ugly very quickly.  There are ways to deal with this- there are techniques to fix them on long stretches (every 3-4 stitches is recommended in my reading) or they can be sewn into place after.  I'm not too worried in this project however as this is a bag and I intend to line it with material anyway to prevent things like pencils or knitting needles from poking out the side.  Just make sure to leave enough slack in the float so bag is not so tiny so as to be suitable for carrying only long skinny knitting needles!

Keep going until the end of the chart.  Knit one more row.  To finish the bag I followed the original  Creeping Jenny instructions from the eyelet row to the end.

Here's the results before blocking.  I'm hoping the weather will be nice tomorrow so I can block this baby and finish it off including a lining and eyelets.  See here for how I made a lining for the bag.

This side shows the middle of the pattern

This side shows the two ends of the pattern.  If you look very closely you may be able to see the slight stager from going from one round to the next.  However the difference is slight and should disappear with some careful blocking.

If you use the chart to make a bag or something else then please let me know!  I'd love to see what it looks like in different colours.  Feel free to use this chart and any other on this blog for your own purposes, just don't sell them.